The basics

How have you selected your Top Charities?

Our top charities are distinguished by the following qualities:

Serving the global poor. Low-income people in the developing world have dramatically lower standards of living than low-income people in the U.S., and we believe that a given dollar amount can provide more meaningful benefits when targeting the former. More

Focused on evidence-backed interventions. We have a high standard for evidence: we seek out programs that have been studied rigorously and repeatedly, and whose benefits we can reasonably expect to generalize to large populations (though there are limits to the generalizability of any study results). The set of programs fitting this description is relatively limited, and mostly found in the category of health interventions (though there is also substantial evidence on cash transfers).

Thoroughly vetted and highly transparent. We examine potentially top charities thoroughly and skeptically, and publish thorough reviews discussing both strengths of these charities and concerns. We also follow top charities' progress over time and report on it publicly, including any negative developments. Charities must be open to our intensive investigation process — and public discussion of their track record and progress, both the good and the bad — in order to earn "top charity" status. We also provide a list of charities meeting our first two criteria for donors who are concerned that this requirement creates problematic selection effects.

What are the pros and cons of giving to GiveWell's top charities?

Our process for identifying Top Charities is rooted in our own struggles as donors and our attempt to find charities that were proven, cost-effective, and scalable, such that we could draw a maximally confident, linear, quantified link between donations and outcomes, along the lines of "$X per life saved" or "$Y per person enabled to get a job paying 20% more than they could have gotten otherwise." (See our former criteria.)

We recognize major limitations to this approach, and we are working to produce recommendations based on an alternate vision of giving — emphasizing higher-risk, higher-upside activities commonly associated with major funders. This alternate approach, the Open Philanthropy Project, hasn't yet produced recommendations.

We don't believe that our top charities offer linear, reliably quantifiable returns along the lines of "$X per life saved," but we do believe that they are distinguished from other charities by their focus on evidence-backed programs aiming to help the global poor and by their transparency and accountability, all of which we believe to be important qualities. (More at our criteria.)

We think the principal advantages of our current top charities are that:

They represent the best opportunities we're aware of to help low-income people with relatively high confidence and relatively short time horizons. If you're looking to give this year and you don't know where to start, we'd strongly recommend supporting our top charities.

Due to the emphasis on thorough vetting, transparency, and following up, our top charities represent excellent learning opportunities, and we feel that one of the most desirable outcomes of giving is learning more that will inform later giving. Supporting our top charities helps GiveWell demonstrate impact and improves our ability to learn, and we are dedicated to sharing what we learn publicly.

Some counter-considerations:

There is an argument for saving money rather than giving, and giving at the point where better information on top giving opportunities is available. We do expect to make substantial progress on the Open Philanthropy Project over the next few years.

If you have access to other giving opportunities that you understand well, have a great deal of context on and have high confidence in — whether these consist of supporting an established organization or helping a newer one get off the ground — it may make more sense to take advantage of your unusual position and "fund what others won't," since GiveWell's research is available to (and influences) large numbers of people.

I have a particular charity in mind. How can I see your view on this charity and why it isn't one of your top charities?

GiveWell focuses on finding the best charities possible, not on reviewing as many charities as possible. Understanding even a single charity in-depth generally takes hundreds of person-hours.

We have written informally about our views on some well-known charities:

GiveWell's top charities

Are GiveWell's top charities tax-deductible where I live?

Donations to GiveWell are tax-deductible in the US., and we are able to take donations for the support of any of our top charities. In addition:

UK donors can make a tax-deductible donation to the Giving What We Can Trust for the support of one or more or GiveWell's recommended charities. Only charities listed on the form are currently eligible – more may be added later. Donations by UK tax-payers via the trust are eligible for Gift Aid.

German and Swiss donors can make a deductible donation to Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung or GBS Schweiz for the support of GiveWell or one or more of our recommended charities. Only charities listed on the form are currently eligible – more may be added later.

Canadian donors can make a tax-deductible donation to Charity Science to support GiveWell or GiveWell's recommended charities. Donors can give online through PayPal (2-3% processing fee) at Charity Science's website, or, for donations greater than $1,000, can contact Charity Science at joey@charityscience.com for more information about giving by check or bank transfer (low or no fees). Note that there is an aggregate limit to how much Charity Science can give to charities that are not registered in Canada, so donors considering giving a gift of $5,000 or more for GiveWell, GiveDirectly, Deworm the World Initiative, GAIN, DMI, or Living Goods should contact Charity Science or GiveWell before donating.

In addition, donations to our top charities and other standout charities themselves are eligible for tax deductions in the following countries:

We ask that donors who use our research to decide to support these organizations through their own websites complete our donation reporting form so we are able to track our own impact.

Unfortunately, there are many countries where many people wish to use our research but none of our top-rated charities are tax-deductible. In some countries, donors may be able to take advantage of donor-advised funds or fiscal sponsorship organizations in order to make tax-deductible gifts to our top charities.

In general, we think that differences in effectiveness between charities are sufficiently large that in cases where the best giving opportunity may not be tax-deductible, it makes sense to give a smaller post-tax donation to the best organization rather than a larger pre-tax donation to a tax-deductible organization. However, we understand that donors may have different intuitions on this question, and are hoping to eventually have tax-deductible giving opportunities in other countries with many GiveWell users.

Some of GiveWell's recommended charities are not U.S.-registered charities. Should I be concerned about this?

We don't think so. The process for becoming a U.S.-registered charity can be long and relatively involved, and some of our recommended charities have not had enough interest from U.S. donors (prior to our recommendation) to have gone through this process. However, we have examined the financial records and established the charitable purposes of all recommended organizations, and for all such organizations we provide some way for US donors to get a tax deduction for supporting them (in some cases by donating to GiveWell, which can make direct grants to support these organizations).

GiveWell's evaluation process is highly intensive and can be a major cost for a charity. Should I be concerned that this requirement filters out excellent charities?

We recognize that this is a potential issue with our rankings, and we provide our full list of eligible charities — charities that focus on evidence-backed programs serving the global poor (our first two criteria), regardless of whether they engage in our process — at Full List of Eligible Charities.

With that said,

Given the large amounts of money that are driven by our recommendations, we believe that charities have strong incentives to engage in our process. We also make substantial efforts to give charities a sense of what they will need to provide in order to achieve recommended status (see our guide to applying for our recommendation). So we believe that charities seeking substantial funding and likely to do well in our process have strong reasons to apply for our recommendation.

We proactively reach out to eligible charities to encourage them to apply and discuss our process with them.

Supporting our top charities has the advantage that (a) they have been thoroughly vetted, with the results written up in detail in our charity reviews; (b) they represent excellent learning opportunities, and we feel that one of the most desirable outcomes of giving is learning more that will inform later giving. Supporting our top charities helps GiveWell demonstrate impact and improves our ability to learn, and we are dedicated to sharing what we learn publicly.

Questions about AMF and its program: distributing bednets to prevent malaria:

Is there really a need for more bednets?

Do people use the free bednets they get?

While this is one of our remaining concerns, we believe the best available evidence suggests that most people do use the bednets they receive. Multiple studies associate nets with cost-effective reductions in malaria burden and child deaths; these studies generally saw usage rates in the 60-80% range; and the best available evidence suggests that usage rates of 60-80% are common. AMF has begun to post survey results on net usage from several years after distributions have been completed.Details at our writeup on net distribution and our review of AMF.

Do nets become less effective over time as mosquitoes adapt to them by evolving resistance to insecticide or changing their behavior?

We see the possibility of resistance as a concern, but there is strong evidence that nets reduce malaria and save lives and only preliminary/suggestive/mixed evidence that insecticide resistance may reduce their impact.

How much does receiving a cash transfer improve the recipient's life?

We are not able to quantify the improvement in quality of life due to cash transfers, in a way that can be directly compared to that of health interventions. As with deworming, there are studies arguing that cash transfers lead to strong productive investment and long-term benefits, but it is also possible that these studies are not representative and that the benefits are more minor.1 Given the state of the available evidence, we concede a major role for one's worldview and intuitions in deciding between cash transfers and health interventions.

Questions about deworming children (a focus of two of our top charities)

What are the benefits of deworming?

Treating children for parasitic infections (deworming) is extremely inexpensive, and there is evidence linking it with substantial developmental benefits (people dewormed in childhood may attend school more, achieve better test results, and earn more later in life); the evidence is not as strong as for insecticide-treated nets but is still far above what we've seen for most charitable interventions. Evidence regarding shorter-term health benefits is mixed. More details at our full report on deworming.

How much money do your top charities need? How much do you expect to get them?

Each review of a recommended charity discusses its room for more funding, i.e., how much more funding it can productively absorb and how this funding would change its activities. We closely track the revenue received by recommended charities, and we cease to recommend donating to a charity once we feel it no longer has short-term room for more funding.

GiveWell's focus on international aid

Why do most of your recommended charities work on international aid?

We have put much of our effort into investigating international aid because this is where we feel an individual donor can accomplish the most good (in terms of significant life change) per dollar given. More

Do the people whose lives are saved just die the next year from something else? What is their quality of life?

We discuss these issues at our writeup on quality of life in the developing world. On one hand, people in Sub-Saharan Africa are much worse off, and much more likely to die prematurely, than people in wealthier parts of the world. On the other hand, those who live past the age of 5 have strong chances of living to age 60 or so; saving a life even from a single cause of death means saving a person who is likely to live quite a while longer.

Does saving lives just lead to overpopulation and long-run damage?

Overall, it appears that life-saving interventions unaccompanied by other improvements, where access to contraception is weak, are likely to lead to some acceleration of population growth. With that said, we wish to note the following:

No intervention takes place in isolation, and we expect population growth to slow in the future in most low-income areas as poverty falls.

Acceleration of population growth should not necessarily be associated with overpopulation and its connotations of a net decline in standards of living.

Three of GiveWell's four current top charities are focused on improving living standards rather than averting deaths, and the Against Malaria Foundation aims to avert deaths and bring about other benefits by reducing the burden of malaria.

Other questions

What happened to the money I gave last year? Will I find out what happens to the money I give this year?

For the charities that we direct the most funds to, we intend to publish regular reports on the charity's progress against its objectives and on its updated financial situation. In 2014, we completed updates on the four organizations to which we had directed the most funding:

We plan to continue the practice of publishing regular updates on our top charities.

How reliable are figures like "$X per life saved"? How important are these in your rankings?

Accomplishing as much good as possible per dollar spent is an important value to us, and we put substantial work into cost-effectiveness estimates. We publish cost-effectiveness figures that represent our best estimates, given all available information. We publish the full details behind these figures and provide spreadsheets that allow readers to see what the most debatable inputs are, and how the estimates change as these estimates vary.

However, all cost-effectiveness analysis of charities we're aware of — including ours — involves a great deal of simplification and guesswork. Therefore, we do cost-effectiveness analysis primarily to look for large, clear differences in good accomplished per dollar spent. We consider many other factors in rating and ranking charities.

What kind of evidence does GiveWell consider legitimate for establishing impact?

We don't have any hard-and-fast rules for what constitutes persuasive evidence; we believe that interpreting evidence on charity effectiveness always takes a substantial amount of judgment calls. We discuss our general principles for evaluating evidence of impact in a series of 2012 blog posts:

I have an opportunity to have my gift "matched" if I give to another charity. Does this mean that donation would have double the impact? Could this be a better choice than giving to your top charities without a match?

We recommend against letting "donation matching" affect your choice of charity. More

Should I give now, or save my money and give later?

We don't believe there is a clear answer, and do believe that it makes sense to give relatively regularly — for example, setting aside a set percentage of annual income. More